Yet you keep falling into the same trap of asserting you know how the body/brain works while at the same time asserting that we cannot trust our senses. — Harry Hindu

Not quite, no. I've addressed this apparent hypocrisy recently and wont rehash because I'll make a pigs ear of it.

How do I know that you read what you read about the body/brain accurately when you depend on your eyes to see the words? How do we know that some mad scientist didn't plant these ideas in your head, or that you didn't hallucinate the experience of reading "facts" about bodies and brains? — Harry Hindu

These are the precise issues I addressed in the referenced response.

So I 100% take that objection, — AmadeusD

Suffice to accept this part of it, at least LOL.

Just because someone can change the time on the clock to report the wrong time does not mean that clocks are useless in telling time — Harry Hindu

This is precisely the defence I've run, in other terms.

In other words, we can determine the validity of what one sense is informing us by using other senses, observing over time and using reason. — Harry Hindu

Yes, correct. This, despite not having any direct access, or certitude about our sensory apprehensions. Its a best-guess, and if that's the best we have, it's the best we have.

Huh. I think that's a very strange thing to say. Unpleasantness is exactly what "pain" indicates to me. It refers to a wide range of unpleasant feelings, just like the dictionary states. What does "pain" mean to you? Does it simply mean the sensation of touch? Are all touches painful to you, or do you have a way to distinguish a painful feeling from a not painful feeling? — Metaphysician Undercover

Very much fair, and I think this may illustrate what I'm saying: Clearly, as between you and I, there is not a 1:1 match between pain and "unpleasantness". Pain (i.e a sensation that indicates injury - physical, or mental (but mental is awhole different discussion I think)) doesn't, inherently, mean displeasure. Maybe that's clearer?
Perhaps you need to maintain my position (that pain is mental) to support the idea that pain is inherently unpleasant, as clearly, to the injury part (i.e the "physical" aspect of pain) this is patently not hte case.

I'm sure you will be able to explain your account without sending us off to such a text. — Banno

I don't have an account because I'm not a physicist or neuroscientist. As I have repeatedly said, perception cannot be explained by armchair philosophy.

But of course pain and colour are quite different. — Banno

Only in that they are caused by quite different brain activity.

Tomatoes, strawberries and radishes really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have. They are red. — Banno

You're equivocating.

If we take dispositionalism as an example then "the tomato is red" means "the tomato is disposed to look red". The word "red" in the phrase "looks red" does not prima facie refer to a property of the tomato, and so it does not prima facie follow from "the tomato is disposed to look red" that the tomato has the distinctive property that it appears to have.

So what do you mean by "the tomato is red"? Without further explanation your claim here is a non sequitur.

You're equivocating. — Michael

So you have claimed. I rather think you are equivocating on the notion of "really", wanting to say that red tomatoes are not really red - the implication being that there is one true way of using words such as red, and all those folk who think that their tomatoes are red are mistaken.

I think you know what is meant by "The tomato is red". And without calling on mental percepts.

But I suspect that the account you try to give of what "The tomato is red" means supposes that there must be a something to which the word "red" refers, perhaps the property of being red, that is common to all red things. And such an approach doesn't work here. Rather, if you take a look at how we use the word "red" you will see that it is used to talk about a range of different things, very few of them being mere mental percepts.

really have the distinctive property that they do appear to have. =/= They are red. — Banno

Jesus christ lol.

That's a misquote.

No. It was a misstatement which I've fixed. You're very much welcome.

Basic stuff. I did not say

=/= They are red. — AmadeusD

Clearly, as between you and I, there is not a 1:1 match between pain and "unpleasantness". — AmadeusD

For sure, there are many types of unpleasantness, and not every one is pain. "Unpleasant" is the wider concept. So not all unpleasantness is pain, but all pain involves unpleasantness.

Pain (i.e a sensation that indicates injury - physical, or mental (but mental is awhole different discussion I think)) doesn't, inherently, mean displeasure. Maybe that's clearer? — AmadeusD

No, not any clearer at all. I think you misunderstood what I meant when I said that unpleasantness inheres within the definition of pain. "Inheres" means existing within something, as an essential property. What this means is that pain implies unpleasantness, because one cannot have pain without unpleasantness. But the inverse is not implied, unpleasantness does not imply pain, because there is unpleasantness which does not involve pain, so pain does not inhere within the definition of unpleasantness.

Perhaps you need to maintain my position (that pain is mental) to support the idea that pain is inherently unpleasant, as clearly, to the injury part (i.e the "physical" aspect of pain) this is patently not hte case. — AmadeusD

We are not talking about the physical aspect of pain. We are talking about pain. I went through this already. There is understood to be a sensory aspect of pain and an affective aspect of pain. You want to focus on the sensory aspect, but just because there is a sensory aspect does not mean that the affective aspect is not a real, and necessary part of pain. Have you not researched those two aspects yet?

If solipsism is the only logical conclusion of recognizing some amount of difference between the object and the perception and naive realism is the only practical solution to avoid that slippery slope, then I choose solipsism because at least it is logical. — Hanover

Okay, and it is no coincidence that you are choosing solipsism, here. Your presuppositions point you in this very direction.

That is, the system you use to prove that things are as they appear proves that things aren't as they appear. — Hanover

Where have I or anyone else here attempted to prove this so-called "naive realism"? The answer is simple: we haven't. Yet the strawman proves eternal.

What we learn is that there is no fully satisfactory answer, which is obvious, as if there were, this would be a physics class and not a philosophy class where there are no answers. — Hanover

The recurrent problem is that your position attempts to draw some kind of substantial conclusion from the fact that there is "no fully satisfactory answer," and this conclusion is logically invalid. There is no problem with pointing to someone's answer and arguing that it is not fully satisfactory. The problem arises when you say, "Your answer is not fully satisfactory, and therefore my opposed position is correct." The invalid inference is the problem, and it is what I have seen from folks like you and Michael in this thread.

Looked at from a different angle, a system which is not fully satisfactory is better than a system which results in performative self-contradictions.

The alternative, which is to just say WYSIWYG suffers from another host of problems. — Hanover

These are more false dichotomies. "My position is pretty bad, but the only alternative is what-you-see-is-what-you-get, therefore we have to accept my position." To claim that the only two options are the infallibility of the senses and the inability of the senses to penetrate reality is to posit a false dichotomy.

This is a recurrence of a kind of Cartesian dichotomy between perfect reliability and certitude, and zero reliability and certitude. The two extremes are not the only possibilities (and I don't mean to indicate that Descartes was himself unaware of this).

But isn’t this approach failing to take into account that the witnessing selves are part of the semiotic construction of a witnessed reality?. . . — apokrisis

I will have to think about this post more, ideally when my head clears of Covid. I don't know that I disagree with any of it, but I also am not convinced that Hanover was making a semiotic argument in the way that you indicate. The argument that he gave seems to me to be invalid, and we could try to generalize it as something like this:

1. If a faculty is not infallible then it is not reliable.
2. X is not infallible.
3. Therefore, X is not reliable.

...Where 'X' is something like the senses or the mind, and (2) is justified by things like dreams and hallucinations.

I think this is just an invalid argument. Something can be reliable without being infallible. The person wielding the argument could press for (1) if they like, and there is admittedly a paradox at play in that neither (1) nor its opposite can be demonstrably proven, but I think we have good non-demonstrative reasons for believing that a faculty need not be infallible in order to be reliable.

The argument that he gave seems to me to be invalid, — Leontiskos

That's a separate matter. :smile:

I just like pointing out how the semiotic approach goes further in emphasising that our model of the world is also the model of "ourselves in the world". The witness and the witnessed are inseparable even in their separation.

So I wasn't meaning to correct you. Just having fun outlining the next step that people never quite arrive at. Rest easy with the covid. :up:

Or if we want to go back to the horse's mouth:

The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation. This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience. The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain. — Hanover

1. "The point of this is that it is empirically proven that an internal, subjective experience can be evoked by direct brain stimulation."
2a. "This means that you cannot conclude anything about the constitution of the stimulus from the experience."
3. "The smell you smell is the product of stimuli upon the brain, so the perception is entirely the creation of the brain."

(3) seems to be a non sequitur plain and simple. There is nothing at all here which proves that perceptions are "entirely the creation of the brain."

But what about (2)? An example would be, "Some people have visual hallucinations, therefore we cannot conclude anything about external objects of sight from the input of our eyes." This looks like a bad argument, albeit not necessarily false. The conclusion depends on the frequency and nature of the aberrations. I would simply say that not all visual aberrations result in the unreliability of sight. Instead of (2a) we could draw (2b) from (1): <Therefore sight is not infallibly a response to an external object>. At the end of the day the question is whether it is more rational to draw (2a) or (2b), and I think the answer is obvious.

- Okay good, that's what I figured. :up: I think you are right that there is a lot to be said once we get past the low-hanging fruit, and people are probably talking past one another to some extent. But the great thing about the internet is that there is always more low-hanging fruit to be had, whether self-generated or not. :grin:

You're asking me which percepts the word "red" refers to. I can only answer such a question by using a word that refers to these percepts, and given that there is no appropriate synonym for "red", all I can do is reuse the word "red".

...

There's nothing "viciously circular" about this. — Michael

Er, this is a quintessential example of vicious circularity. The fact that you can only answer such a question by giving a circular answer just shows that your account has failed. If you were correct in saying that 'red' means a percept, then your answer to Banno's question would viciously recur as follows:

• (Option 1: 'Red' = 'Red percept')
• "Red percept"
• "[Red percept] percept"
• "[[Red percept] percept] percept"
• "[[[Red percept] percept] percept] percept"

Or else:

• (Option 2: 'Red' = 'Percept')
• "Red percept"
• "[Percept] percept"

(As Banno indicates, option 2 fails to distinguish red from any other percept)

Cf:

every red is a percept — Michael

The red percepts... — Michael

If every red is a percept then it makes no sense to speak substantially about red percepts. The equivocation becomes more clear if you compare, "The red pen," to, "The red percept." If we follow your lead and reduce each statement consistently, then the first renders, "The red percept of the pen," and the second renders, "The red percept of the percept" (or else via option 2, "The percept of the pen," and, "The percept of the percept"). This all reflects a muddled understanding of language. Predications of color cannot be reduced to predications about percepts in the way you claim. You are involved in category errors which conflate an object-predication-intention with an efficient-cause-intention. It is two different things to talk about the redness of an object as opposed to the percept which mediates that redness. You are simply incorrect to claim that whenever we are talking about the redness of an object we are talking about nothing other than the percept which mediates that redness.* Your attempt to try to treat color predications as percept predications demonstrates that color predications are not percept predications at all, which should have been obvious from the start.

We can also see this by noting that we generally only refer to the perceptual apparatus when we are speaking about perceptual aberrations or abnormalities. For example, when colorblindness enters the conversation recourse to the perceptual apparatus of the colorblind subject will be at hand. But if we cannot distinguish the red object from the red percept, then we will no longer be able to talk about colorblindness, or any other kind of abnormal visual processing. Ironically then, if 'red' meant only a percept we would lose a great deal of scientific rigor. (This is similar to the Protagorean, "Man is the measure," result, which is akin to the way your approach overstates the case. Perceptions are not interchangeable with realities, even when it comes to color. Someone who forgets they are wearing red-tinted glasses might call a white ball red, but we all recognize that they are wrong despite their percept.)


* Your "scientific" argument would be more correctly exposited if you claimed that the subject commonly commits an error of inference regarding the cause of their visual experience. In that case I think you would still largely be wrong, but at least in a more plausible way.

Notice no mental percepts needed
— Richard B

Of course they are, else you wouldn't be seeing anything; you'd just have light reaching your eyes and then nothing happening, e.g. blindness or blindsight. — Michael

I think the following two passages provides some insight on how Wittgenstein viewed perception and colors:

From Wittgenstein's "Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology The Inner and the Outer Volume 2",

"Psychology describes the phenomena of color-blindness as well as those of normal sight. What are the phenomena of color blindness'? Certainty the reactions of the color-blind person which differentiate him from the normal person. But certainly not all of the color-blind person's reactions, for example not those that distinguish him from a blind person. - Can I teach the blind what seeing is, or can I teach this to the sighted? That doesn't mean anything. Then what does it mean: to describe seeing? But I can teach human beings the meaning of the words "blind" and "sighted", and indeed the sighted learn them, just as the blind do. Then do the blind know what it is like to see? But do the sighted know? Do they also know what it's like to have consciousness?"

"Indeed he might be astonished when he sees the object, but in order to 'be astonished about the colour', in order for the colour to be the reason of his astonishment and not just the cause of his experience, he needs not just sight, but to have the concept of colour."

We don't learn concepts of "color" and "seeing" by only experiencing colors and seeing. We don't teach children what colors are by sharing are experiences of mental percepts of color, but by using the words under particular circumstance and seeing if the child can do the same. We don't teach what "seeing" means by describing what seeing is, but by using the word in the form of life humans typically engage in. By using these learned words and acting in the appropriate ways, we demonstrate to our fellow humans we do experience such things as colors and seeing.

For sure, there are many types of unpleasantness, and not every one is pain. "Unpleasant" is the wider concept. So not all unpleasantness is pain, but all pain involves unpleasantness. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it doesn't. I seriously do not think you are taking enough time to read these replies. I am directly, stringently addressing this point in each reply and you seem to miss it entirely. I have given you several inarguable examples of why pain is not always unpleasant and further that this isn't part of it's nature. If you reject this, fine, but you need to actually tell me why all the examples and reasons are wrong. You have not. The quote you used directly contradicts your position by my existing in this discussion. You can't be missing that, can you? You're replying, after all, to someone who does not always experience unpleasantness along with pain.

because one cannot have pain without unpleasantness — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes they can. Sorry.

unpleasantness does not imply pain — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed. This was never put forward. Unpleasantness infers (well, requires) discomfort to obtain. Pain does not require unpleasantness to obtain. It simply doesn't. I don't know why you're claiming this against empirical evidence of millions of humans experiencing pain without unpleasantness - and in fact, experiencing pleasure from pain. This is just... why are you trying to simply erase a load of facts about other people's experience, including mine? Are you trying to say I'm lying?

"Inheres" means existing within something, as an essential property. — Metaphysician Undercover

I got you the first time. You're just not confronting what i've said at all. My reply is directly relevant to this, and unfortunately, shows it to be wrong. Pain is a sensation directed at the host attending to an injury. Unpleasantness is just one mode of this occurring to cut through other stimuli. Pain is patently not always unpleasant. I experience this fact all the time. Why are you not getting this??? "hurts so good"

so pain does not inhere within the definition of unpleasantness. — Metaphysician Undercover

This wasn't suggested. I think you're maybe off on your own tangent now? All i put forward was that "unpleasant" sensation requires discomfort to be so labelled, but "pain" does not require "unpleasant" for hte same. And it doesn't. Sorry if you still think it does - this one isn't a "positional" disagreement. You are wrong. As I and billions of other's instantiate. If you've literally never felt a pain without also feeling that it is unpleasant, that's a shame - but understandable. It's a tricky thing. I absolutely, almost sexually, enjoy the pain of scalding water on the tops of my hands, my inner thighs, behind my shoulders and right on my hip bones (to the point that i had very midly burned myself many times in pursuit of it (opportunistic pursuit, to be sure)). It is definitely pain. But it is definitely not unpleasant. Its a tool telling me to stop fucking running scalding water on myself lmao. EVENTUALLY this can get unpleasant - as, when my skin starts melting, my brain kicks it up a few notches. Fair, too. I'm not exactly the most caring about my own body in this way. I self harmed for years. another notch on this club.

Have you not researched those two aspects yet? — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems you did not read that paragraph very well, as nothing you've said aligns with anything I've said. Huh.

If every red is a percept then it makes no sense to speak substantially about red percepts. The equivocation becomes more clear if you compare, "The red pen," to, "The red percept." If we follow your lead and reduce each statement consistently, then the first renders, — Leontiskos

This is a an opportunistic reversal of Banno's argument. We use language differently. Great! "red" conceptually is a percept (lets pretend) and "the red pen" or "the red percept" is a label which is conventionally used to cut-down the actual phrase "Items we use to write with, containing ink flowing to a nib, which reflects light in "such and such a range" so as to trigger, under normal circumstances, that percept referred to as "the colour red" as a property of the brain-generated image of the object viewed by the sensory organ". But we don't say that. We say "red pen". Not "because we say X, therefore, Y". That's just shitty reasoning that makes no sense unless you think that language literally creates the world (I think Banno does).

Nothing around this thread violates this. There's nothing circular about hte fact that we re-use, mis-use and multiply-use words - and can be wrong in how we use them. The convention "literally" has had to undergo a redefinition because of it's constant misuse. Not a misuse anymore, is it?? Because convention said so. Not in any way relevant to trying to tease out the basis of colour experience. This doesn't touch on any of the science/scientistic claptrap you lot are stuck on. However, Michael has made some mistakes... not my circus. I just reply where I can see a point.

We don't teach children what colors are by sharing are experiences of mental percepts of color — Richard B

yes we do. We literally compare items and teach children that the correlation in their mind between these items is due to colour concepts. Shades come after and probably fit better into what you're talking about. having raised two children, and specifically tasked with introducing the younger of the two to colours and hte understanding of them (as between objects) says I know that this is hte case.

"basic stuff" but you don't understand inferences, or fixing the nonsense you come up with sometimes. Tsk tsk.

You need to get over your obsession with language. The discussion is about perception, not speech. We must look to physics and physiology, not to all the ways that the word “red” is used in English.

I don't care about how Wittgenstein viewed perception and colours. He was not a physicist or a neuroscientist and so he didn't have the appropriate expertise. To think that somehow an examination of language can address such issues is laughable. Do you want to do away with the Large Hadron Collider and simply talk our way into determining how the world works?

That the pen is red just is that it (ordinarily) appears red, and the word “red” in the phrase “appears red” does not refer to a mind-independent property of the pen but to the mental percept that looking at the pen (ordinarily) causes to occur.

I just like pointing out how the semiotic approach goes further in emphasising that our model of the world is also the model of "ourselves in the world". — apokrisis

I don't think this is really the case, and that is why this sort of discussion goes on forever. Our model of the world is one put together through the scientific method of experimentation and observation. The model of ourselves in the world is based in principles of moral philosophy, because it must include intention motivation, politics and other human interactions. These two types of models are very far apart.

It seems to me that the distinction between direct and indirect realism is useless. Would you say that you have direct or indirect access to your mental phenomenon?
— Harry Hindu

Direct - there is nothing between my mind and itself. That's the nature of the distinction. I have direct access to my experiences. Not their causes.
It might not 'mean much' out there in the world, but in terms of the discussion we're having its the central, crucial thing to be understood. So, I reject your opener on those grounds. But i acknowledge that for a certain kind of philosopher, this is going to look like a couple of guys around a pub table arguing over the blue/white black/gold dress. I disagree is all :) — AmadeusD

I would assume that you know your mind to be real. Then which is the case - direct realism, indirect realism, both, or neither? If you can talk about the contents of your mind like you can talk about the contents of your pants pocket, then what is the difference if you're telling me the truth in both cases?

Not quite, no. I've addressed this apparent hypocrisy recently and wont rehash because I'll make a pigs ear of it. — AmadeusD

You couldn't at least link it in your reply considering that we are 38 pages into this discussion?

Yes, correct. This, despite not having any direct access, or certitude about our sensory apprehensions. Its a best-guess, and if that's the best we have, it's the best we have. — AmadeusD

If you were able to accomplish your task using your senses then was it really a best guess or an accurate perception?

If these problems only arise in philosophical discussions and not in everyday life, then maybe there's an issue with philosophy. Most philosophical problems are the result of a misuse of language. Our survival in a hostile environment is evidence enough that we have more than a best guess about the state of our environment. I would argue that instinctive behaviors that evolved as general responses to a static environment are best guesses whereas humans have evolved to allow us to be more adaptable to changing environments to the point where we no longer need to adapt to our environment. We mold the environment for ourselves.

I am arguing that despite the "indirect" nature of perception we can get a "direct" sense of what the case is by understanding that determinism is the case (which is why time can seem to have no direction as effects are as much about their causes as causes are about their effects) and that effects carry information about their causes. "Direct" and "Indirect" are in quotes because I find that they unnecessarily complicate the discussion. I find it very difficult to believe that humans have been able to shape their environment to such a degree simply based on "best guessing". Are we having an effect on our environment or not?

Where is the pain? If it is in the limb, you can show me.
But you cannot show me pain.
You can show me potential stimulus for pain.
That's all. I need not take this much further to be quite comfortable that your position is not right (yet..) — AmadeusD

What would be the point in showing you pain? The pain is for me, not for you. I am the one injured, not you. The pain is about the state of my body, not yours. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, I could bash your same thumb with the same hammer and you'd have a good idea of what I was feeling, but that would not be the point of me informing you that I am in pain. The point would be to seek assistance. This is what I mean that philosophical language use tends to muddy the waters here.

Besides, if pain is only in the mind, then the stimulus is only in the mind. When I ask you to show me the stimulus, you are referencing your own visual experience - the visual location of the injury, which is in your mind. As we already discussed a while back visual depth is in your mind so you run into the same problem with any sensory experience you have. Based on what you have said in that we cannot show you pain it does not follow that we can show you the stimulus.

Let's say I have a severe injury on my back. I cannot see the injury but I can feel it. Adrenaline may be masking the severity of the injury by masking the pain. You, however, have a clear view of the injury. Who has more accurate information about my injury? If you can have more information about my injury because of the level of detail human vision provides over the sensation of pain, then what does that say about the direct vs. indirect distinction when it comes to knowing what is the case?

That the pen is red just is that it (ordinarily) appears red, and the word “red” in the phrase “appears red” does not refer to a mind-independent property of the pen but to the mental percept that looking at the pen (ordinarily) causes to occur. — Michael

This is another example of the category error conflation between an object-predication-intention and an efficient-cause-intention.

<"The pen appears red" does not refer to the pen but to a percept>

When we speak about the pen we are speaking about the pen, not about percepts. Pens and percepts are two different things. Maybe you (erroneously) think everyone should replace all of their color predications about pens with predications about percepts, but this in no way shows that when people talk about red pens they are doing nothing more than talking about percepts.

I don't plan to draw this out, but Banno's argument is worth affirming. I've had enough discussions with you to know that this conversation is going nowhere. In fact while having discussions with you in the past I received PMs from others, "Just be aware that conversations with Michael go nowhere. Don't inflate your expectations."

The convention "literally" has had to undergo a redefinition because of it's constant misuse. — AmadeusD

Yes, and as you seem to imply, this is a rather different claim than Michael's. It is the claim that we should stop thinking of redness as a property of pens, as opposed to the claim that red refers to a percept in common use.

'Red' is a word which does not refer to a percept.
If we like we can talk about red-qua-percept, and this is obviously to talk about a percept.
<We should redefine 'red' to mean red-qua-percept> is a claim, and it is a claim which I believe runs into rather significant problems.

We use language differently. Great! "red" conceptually is a percept (lets pretend) and "the red pen" or "the red percept" is a label which is conventionally used to cut-down the actual phrase "Items we use to write with, containing ink flowing to a nib, which reflects light in "such and such a range" so as to trigger, under normal circumstances, that percept referred to as "the colour red" as a property of the brain-generated image of the object viewed by the sensory organ". But we don't say that. We say "red pen". — AmadeusD

Look, pens and percepts are different kinds of realities, reflecting different categories. The categories are not interchangeable. And observe what happens when you try to interchange them:

• "the red pen" or "the red percept" is a label which is conventionally used to cut-down the actual phrase "Items we use to write with. . ."
  
  • 1. "the red pen" is a label which is conventionally used to cut-down the actual phrase "Items we use to write with. . ."
  • 2. "the red percept" is a label which is conventionally used to cut-down the actual phrase "Items we use to write with. . ."

Now I truncated your sentence for brevity, but note that (1) is true and (2) is false, and this is because pens and percepts are not interchangeable. A pen is an item we write with, whereas a percept is not. "Red pen" and "red percept" are two fundamentally different kinds of linguistic entities.

When we speak about the pen we are speaking about the pen, not about percepts. Pens and percepts are two different things. Maybe you (erroneously) think everyone should replace all of their color predications about pens with predications about percepts, but this in no way shows that when people talk about red pens they are doing nothing more than talking about percepts. — Leontiskos

Yes, and that's the fallacy. See the SEP article on color:

On a third view, Color Projectivism, the qualities presented in visual experiences are subjective qualities, which are “projected” on to material objects: the experiences represent material objects as having the subjective qualities. Those qualities are taken by the perceiver to be qualities instantiated on the surfaces of material objects—the perceiver does not ordinarily think of them as subjective qualities.

This is what we naively do, and physics and neuroscience has proven it false. When you talk about red pens you are talking about both pens and percepts, whether you realise it or not.

- I have seen you do little more in this thread than make arguments from authority. The authorities you appeal to are SEP and "science," and you misinterpret them both. Each time you try to give actual arguments in your own words, the arguments fall to pieces, and this is no coincidence.

I have seen you do little more in this thread than make arguments from authority. — Leontiskos

Yes. Perception cannot be explained by armchair philosophy. It can only be explained by physics and physiology, and so I am simply reporting on what the scientists have determined. I'll do so again:

Vision science: Photons to phenomenology:

People universally believe that objects look colored because they are colored, just as we experience them. The sky looks blue because it is blue, grass looks green because it is green, and blood looks red because it is red. As surprising as it may seem, these beliefs are fundamentally mistaken. Neither objects nor lights are actually “colored” in anything like the way we experience them. Rather, color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights. The colors we see are based on physical properties of objects and lights that cause us to see them as colored, to be sure, but these physical properties are different in important ways from the colors we perceive.

Color:

One of the major problems with color has to do with fitting what we seem to know about colors into what science (not only physics but the science of color vision) tells us about physical bodies and their qualities. It is this problem that historically has led the major physicists who have thought about color, to hold the view that physical objects do not actually have the colors we ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess. Oceans and skies are not blue in the way that we naively think, nor are apples red (nor green). Colors of that kind, it is believed, have no place in the physical account of the world that has developed from the sixteenth century to this century.

Not only does the scientific mainstream tradition conflict with the common-sense understanding of color in this way, but as well, the scientific tradition contains a very counter-intuitive conception of color. There is, to illustrate, the celebrated remark by David Hume:

"Sounds, colors, heat and cold, according to modern philosophy are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind." (Hume 1738: Bk III, part I, Sect. 1 [1911: 177]; Bk I, IV, IV [1911: 216])

Physicists who have subscribed to this doctrine include the luminaries: Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Newton, Thomas Young, Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz. Maxwell, for example, wrote:

"It seems almost a truism to say that color is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of color." (Maxwell 1871: 13 [1970: 75])

This combination of eliminativism—the view that physical objects do not have colors, at least in a crucial sense—and subjectivism—the view that color is a subjective quality—is not merely of historical interest. It is held by many contemporary experts and authorities on color, e.g., Zeki 1983, Land 1983, and Kuehni 1997.

Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway:

There is no color in light. Color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus. This distinction is critical for understanding neural representations, which must transition from a representation of a physical retinal image to a mental construct for what we see. Here, we dissociated the physical stimulus from the color seen by using an approach that causes changes in color without altering the light stimulus. We found a transition from a neural representation for retinal light stimulation, in early stages of the visual pathway (V1 and V2), to a representation corresponding to the color experienced at higher levels (V4 and VO1).

Opticks:

The homogeneal Light and Rays which appear red, or rather make Objects appear so, I call Rubrifick or Red-making; those which make Objects appear yellow, green, blue, and violet, I call Yellow-making, Green-making, Blue-making, Violet-making, and so of the rest. And if at any time I speak of Light and Rays as coloured or endued with Colours, I would be understood to speak not philosophically and properly, but grossly, and accordingly to such Conceptions as vulgar People in seeing all these Experiments would be apt to frame. For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour.

They are literally saying "color is a psychological property of our visual experiences when we look at objects and lights, not a physical property of those objects or lights", "color is a sensation", "color is in the perceiver, not the physical stimulus", and "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour."

I cannot be misrepresenting them by quoting their own words. They mean exactly what they say.

Your only retort seems to be that we talk about colours as if they are properties of pens. And yes, we often do. And we're wrong, as the science shows.

The discussion is about perception, not speech. — Michael

It's you who are claiming that the tomato is red but not really red; these are your words, your word game. All I'm doing is pointing out how silly that is. You pretend not to be involved in a discussion about language but your view hinges on your use of a single word.

Yep. They really have the distinctive property that they appear to. They are red. — Banno

I'd say they have absorption spectrums within the 'spectrum space' that people typically classify as red.

They have a somewhat distinctive absorption spectrum as individuals, although they don't have perfectly homogenous surfaces, and different areas on the surface of the tomato will vary in absorption spectrum to some extent. However most of the subregions of the surface of the tomato, despite being somewhat different in absorption spectrum, still fall within the spectrum space typically classified as red.

(Or at least, that is what I would say if I was particularly in the mood to be pedantic.)

You pretend not to be involved in a discussion about language but your view hinges on your use of a single word. — Banno

It seems more an effort to discuss at the level of neurobiology. And so the "language" or semiotics of perceptual experience.

Of course hue discrimination appears in our language games too. Ask any interior decorator. They have 100 names for shades that are nearly white.

But words are the currency of a socially-constructed level of world-modelling. Neurobiology concerns the far more complicated science of neurobiological world-modelling.

You keep mixing these categories, or just in fact bluntly pretending there is nothing worth talking about beyond your narrow comfort zone. But without a neurobiology of perception, there can be no social game of comparing beetles in boxes. The private/public distinction would be metaphysically moot as the grounds for it would simply fail to exist.

It's you who are claiming that the tomato is red but not really red; these are your words — Banno

They're not my words. I said that the tomato does not have the property that it appears to have. The property that it appears to have is in fact a subjective quality, and so is a percept, not a mind-independent property of material surfaces.

You are showing yet again that you are equivocating. As you have mentioned before, the predicate "is red" doesn't just mean one thing. What the dispositionalist means by "the tomato is red" isn't what the naive colour realist means by "the tomato is red". According to the former meaning, "the tomato is red" is true. According to latter meaning, "the tomato is red" is false.

My concern isn't with the sentence "the tomato is red" precisely because the sentence is used to mean different things by different people (and you haven't explained what you mean by it); my concern is with the nature of a tomato's appearance. This is explained by physics and physiology, not by language, and eliminativism is consistent with the science (with projectivism explaining the way we think and talk about colours).